Derek and Clive (Peter Cook & Dudley Moore) help please..

All 3 LP's are funny. The 1st Derek And Clive Alive is very funny. The last one Ad Nauseam with the vomit bag cover is pretty disgusting. If you like sick they were the best. Very english and very drunk...

 

It's called "Derek and Clive Alive"

 

Can anybody tell me which of these albums scientifically postulates that bogeys are unseaworthy?

 

How funny you find Derek and Clive is directly proportional to how drunk you are. The litmus test is whether the idea of pulling lobsters out of Jayne Mansfield's ****hole is funny to you.

Personally, I find Ad Nauseam to be their funniest album. 'The Horn' is one of those immense achievements of comedy on vinyl alongside Lenny Bruce's 'The Palladium.' The Beethoven payoff is just sublime. It's like a side-long Neil Young slow-burner, only funny.

 

You also have to have been immersed in that English type of comedy all your life to fully get it. Derek And Clive is basically a blue version of their 60s BBC show "Not Only... But Also"

 

Derek and Clive (Live). And for all I know the others as well, but I haven't heard those.

 

There's plenty of stuff on youtube if you want to have a listen. There are some great sketches on there, my favourites include Celebrity Suicide, a game show where the last celebrity to hang himself wins a £1000, and a rather brilliant Peter Cook monologue about taking an unhealthy interest in former Prime Minister Clement Attlee! Some of the misogynist stuff is a bit much at times, but there were no boundaries. It's pretty much Peter Cook going wild after a late night bender, but some of his wordplay is genius at times, and for that it's worthwhile. John Cleese once said he couldn't envision himself making a joke about cancer. Peter Cook disagreed.

 

Derek And Clive Alive is my favorite but the others have bits that make them worth having. Much of the "Alive" album was filmed while being made and is on youtube. Seeing Dudley starting to break up while Peter is going off on a tangent makes the youtube stuff worth searching out and makes listening to "Alive" even funnier. There's stuff from that recording and filming that didn't make the album, like when Peter brings in the blowup girl or when the police were called in as a practical joke.

Derek & Clive albums have made me see humor is things I never thought I'd ever find funny. When Peter talks of getting the horn while looking at the dead Pope in his casket or deciding to break the world record for longest trail of snot, and yes...lobsters up Jane Mansfield's a$$whole, I've laughed so hard I cried. Peter Cook was a strange one which made him that much funnier.

 

About 5 years ago I found a Derek and Clive song-by-song review of the Rolling Stones album 'It's Only Rock and Roll.' It was tacked onto the end of a live Stones bootleg CD. Mick and Charlie are with them, and it's absolutely hilarious!

 

Thank you, good sir. My, you sure have versatile tastes

 

It's been ages since I watched it, but I am fairly sure that was from the Ad Nauseam sessions, since it features the longer bit that eventually became 'The Horn.' It's on DVD as Derek and Clive Get the Horn. I have it on VHS. As I said - been a while since I watched it. I think at one stage Richard Branson arranges for a stripper to come into the studio, which rather brings out Cook's inner misogynist.

If you like Derek and Clive, there's no reason you won't like Cook and Moore's 'clean' material. Their old Decca LPs are pretty easy to find (at least in my neighbourhood) and there's a DVD or two of their Not Only But Also TV show. Not to mention the original film of Bedazzled.

 

That's on Totonka's Headin' For An Overload, for a description see (scroll to the very bottom):

http://www.rollingstonesnet.com/CDs.html

 

Derek & Clive LP's are prog rock and punk rock fused together as a comedy act. "The Horn" routine is absolutely fantastic and there's really nothing like it. All three albums re-released on very reasonable CD's which should be available new or used at online retailers.

Booze does add to your listening pleasure, but that could be said about any album.

 

I have never seen one, and it sems unlikely since Derek and Clive (Live) was on Island and Come Again and Ad Nauseam were on Virgin.

I remember Stephen Fry delivering a TV eulogy to Cook, in which he said that Cook had 'funny' in the same way that beautiful people have 'beauty.' Which I think is a beautiful sentiment.

 

Derek and Clive (Live) and the EMI CD Come Again are both hilarious. Fair warning, though: They are filthy.

 

I consider Peter Cook the single funniest man to ever inhabit this planet.

 

'Come Again' for me.

I heard the other studio LP and it wasn't as clever.

 

I think Not Only But Also was one of those instances where BBC cost cutting led to the tapes being erased for a lot of their shows and the DVD was pretty much most of the extant footage. So the LPs probably contain material that's no longer available on video (though I would have to check this).
ISTR a second DVD being released of some additional footage that was found, but I haven't seen this. Beyond the Fringe is, of course, great. There was one UK 'Original Cast' album and two US ones. Not sure whether the UK and the first US one were the same (I think maybe they were different performances of the same material). The wittily named Cook/Moore revue, Behind the Fridge is also worth seeking.

There is/was a website for the 'Peter Cook Appreciation Society.' I won't link to it since it contained downloadable rips of some LPs and that might be against forum rules, but I think there was a fairly comprehensive discography there.

Oh, and the Derek and Clive stuff is not only absolutely filthy, it is also quite blasphemous in parts, so those of a religious disposition might want to steer clear.

 

Remember buying 'Derek & Clive Come Again' on release in 1977. I'd heard the 1st one - 'Derek & Clive Live' so I knew what to expect but this surpassed it. The back cover had no tracklisting so as I walked away from the record shop I took a peek at the record itself. Titles like In the Cubicles, Joan Crawford, Cancer, Non-stop Dancer/My Mum Song, it was obvious why they were being a bit discreet.
I taped it and played it at work. My workmates were in the 18-30 age group & were huge fans of Peter Cook-Dudley Moore, Monty Python etc., but they were really unimpressed. They felt it was all gratuitous offensiveness & swearing for it's own sake. Then, after a while they warmed to it albeit grudgingly. Little phrases and one-liners from the record started creeping into general conversations quite spontaneously.
I remember one friend got a real bollocking after playing the tape at home in front of his family & was furious with me even though I'd TOLD him to listen to it in private first. Another friend told me that as the record went on he felt like looking out of his window expecting some of his neighbours to be walking up to complain. Another said - in all seriousness, that he was amazed they hadn't been arrested for putting it out in the 1st place.
Really surprised this thread came up here. The Rolling Stone album guide said the records were an exaggerated send up of the British working class and not very funny to American ears. Too parochial in other words. Fair enough. But to toe-rag's like me it's hilarious. Great stuff.
Come Again get's my vote, with a nod to the Margaret Thatcher skit on Ad Nauseum.